Illuminated by the lights of a small excavator, a firefighter comes out of the small cave made out of the rubble of the house. Dozens of neighbors, all men, witness the scene, unaware of the danger posed by the leaning walls of the surrounding buildings. As soon as he gets up, the rescuer turns to one of his colleagues: “Write down, it is 10:15 p.m..” It has been 23 hours and four minutes since the ground shook in Moulay Brahim (pop. 8,000) and the rescue teams accompanied of dozens of volunteers just found Amina’s body.
The 35-year-old woman died along with her four children under the walls of her home, but the only bodies found under this mass of stones, bricks and scrap iron on Saturday evening were hers and her youngest, elderly son’s three. A few hundred meters uphill, Amina’s mother and other women are desperately waiting for news of her daughter and grandson.
“It only took five minutes. “The earth shook and suddenly everything collapsed,” says Husein Aitzagut at the door of his house, where he lives with his wife Rachida, his three-year-old son Mohamed, his father and two of his sisters-in-law. Those five minutes described by Hussein resulted in the collapse of dozens of houses and left many others with large cracks and major structural damage that will most likely have to be demolished if they do not collapse on their own first. A total of 28 bodies were recovered from the rubble on Saturday and stored at the municipal health center, while the 45 wounded were transferred to Marrakesh, according to soldiers who coordinated the rescue operations.
Husein Aitzagut stands among the ruins of Mulay Brahim.Moeh Aitar
After the Covid-19 pandemic, religious tourism had returned to Moulay Brahim, a hilltop village at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, at an altitude of 1,300 meters and just 50 kilometers from Marrakech. The Muslim saint of the same name is buried there, and every year thousands of people from all over Morocco visit his mausoleum to perform rituals in his honor and thank him for his promises to find work, get married, have children and recover from illness , to name just a few. In addition to agriculture, all the utensils related to the saint, the souvenirs and objects for his veneration as well as the accommodation for renting out rooms ensure that the population is fed. Locals believe visitors will be slow to return as everything is now in ruins.
Walking through the narrow streets is a dangerous gymkhana where you have to avoid huge brick and cement blocks, beams, stones, broken pipes and wires dangling from their poles. All of this is under walls and balconies in overhanging cantilevers about to collapse. In the few squares and open spaces in the village, huge tents have been erected and covered with carpets, in which hundreds of women and children are crowded together, while the men, roaming from one place to another, are eager for help, food and drink care for. and water.
Military, firefighters and medical personnel are involved in rescuing and treating the wounded. However, the distribution of food and drinks is carried out by local clubs that are otherwise dedicated to organizing sporting, cultural and social activities for local residents. The president of one of the organizations, Abdullah Ait-Malik, explains how they work in a kind of self-government process involving the men of the village. “First we set up the tents for the women and children. In each of them there is a responsible person who has the task of transmitting to them what they need and we provide them with it. Then the women cook for everyone.”
Bottles of water, flour, pasta, milk, milk and biscuits
He tells the story in a room full of bottles of mineral water, flour, pasta, milk and cookies donated by other groups and people who want to help. “The vegetables have just arrived and we expect bread, meat and chicken to arrive tomorrow,” adds Abdullah from the door of the organization’s storage room, whose facade has also collapsed. Currently, supplies to the village from large trucks are being hampered by huge stones up to two meters high that have fallen on the winding road that connects the village to Marrakech some 30 miles further.
The night brings the cold, and in the crowded tents, children cling to their mothers under blankets while the older women stir huge pots of pasta over wood fires for dinner. “The authorities have forced many people not to return to their homes and settle here because of the risk of new landslides, but many others have decided to settle on the streets because they are afraid of a repeat of the earthquake,” explains Husein who He took all his belongings out onto the street as a precaution. The families who don’t fit in the tents have settled down with their mattresses in the fields around the city.
Beneath the remains of Amina’s house, neighbors help firefighters retrieve her body and continue searching for her son’s. Some aren’t afraid to put themselves in harm’s way by walking through the rubble with their cell phone lights to get a better view. Her husband, the family’s only survivor because he ran their business during the quake, calmly watches the scene and crouches down. “He’s in shock; Firefighters had to hold him several times throughout the day to stop him from burying himself with his bare hands,” said Yusef Ait, one of his relatives who traveled from Marrakesh to help him. Now all he can do is comfort him.
One of the tents in the square of the Moulay Brahim Mosque where women and children sleep.Moeh Aitar
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive more English-language news from EL PAÍS USA Edition